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Her cheeks pale.
“Next time,” he suggests playfully, “text me first, and I’ll send you a better picture to publish. I’m a vain man, Ms. Cannon. Image matters to me, and the shit you published made me look like an undergrown nerd with skin issues.” He broadens his shoulders and smirks. “Everyone who knows me knows I’m sexier than that.”
“God.” She groans, much the same way she did leading up to the worst twenty-hours of my life. Her stone body loosens, and her cheeks flush a dangerous gray. “I don’t feel well.”
“Alright. Move, dickhead.” I push past my brother and emerge into the kitchen to find Mayet waiting with her medical kit.
Archer prepares something to eat behind the island counter. Micah watches us approach and nods his head to the side. Following his indication, I find the wheelchair I requested—magically procured in the time it took for Christabelle and I to shower—parked against the wall.
I start in that direction. “She feels sick again, Mayet. What’ve you got for her?”
“Time to check her sugars. Set her in the chair, and I’ll?—”
Christabelle evidently spots our destination, because she tenses in my arms. “A wheelchair?” She spasms when her brain catches up, fighting for freedom. “Absolutely not!”
“Stop wriggling.” I hold her tighter, or risk dropping her. “CeCe! You’re gonna end up on your ass and crying about a broken tailbone if you don’t stop.”
“Get me a normal chair.” She writhes and kicks out, threatening Minka’s face when her foot comes dangerously close to the doctor’s chin… and risks Archer’s bullet in her ass, as his eagle eyes observe from across the room. “I’m not sitting in a friggin’ wheelchair, Felix!”
“It’s a chair.” I carry her over to it despite her protests. “Jesus, princess. It’s a seat. Use the damn thing.”
“Here.” Micah tugs a dining chair away from the table no one ever sits at. In fact, I’m not sure I remember the last time anyone touched it at all. “She can sit here.”
“Whatever.” I change course and bring her to the table, but when I set her down and she sways dangerously to the left, I place my body beside hers and force her to use my hip as a wall. “Minka?”
“Yep.” She kneels in front of Christabelle and pricks her finger, drawing blood and feeding it into the machine that beeps in her hand. Then she stands again, taking the device away and leaving us behind. “Prepare her a small meal,” she says to Archer. “Do you have jerky sticks or something?”
“Yeah.” He sets his knife down and moves to the fridge, whileChristabelle merely whimpers, her body dead weight against my side. “We have Gatorade, too. You want that?”
“Yeah.”
Minka crosses to him to collect the provisions but I bring my focus down to the woman whose pride will get her killed. Her independent streak, the reason she’ll be dead and buried sooner than she probably hopes.
I hold her shoulders to bring her weight off my side, then I crouch until our eyes are on the same level. “You often this wishy-washy and weak, Darling? Or is this a show you’re putting on specially for me?”
“Is this your attempt at flirting?” Cato pulls up a chair on my right and plops his ass down. His grin, goofy and carefree, and his annoying tendency to want to be close, probably the reason Mayet is always begging to send him back to New York.
The kid is clingy. And he’s clingy with women most of all.
Mommy issues. We all have ‘em.
“I like your eyes, Ms. Cannon.” He leans closer to force himself into her view. “They’re pretty.”
“Fuck off.” I press my palm to his face and shove him back. “Ignore him. He lacks IQ.”
“Pshht.” He reaches out and presses the tip of his pointer finger to Christabelle’s knee, drawing a swirling pattern on her skin, which only results in her curling away from him and into my chest.
I grab his wrist and twist his hand back until he squeaks in pain, then I meet his eyes for the last time before my patience snaps. “Walk away, Cato. Right now.”
“Fine.” He pushes up from his chair, the legs scraping along the tile floor, then he storms across to the fridge to peruse for the thing he likes second-best to women: food. “I was promised a good time,” he grumbles. “Dragged across the country in the dead of night, and assured this would be fun.”
“No.” Minka strides over and sets Christabelle’s meal on the table. “You were told to get your ass in the car, because we didn’t trust you to stay in our apartment without us.”
She snatches up the Gatorade bottle first and cracks the seal on the lid before passing it to Christabelle. Then she gets to work unwrappinga stick of jerky. “Your sugars are a little low now, Ms. Cannon. We’re walking a tightrope, trying to get you smooth again, and when we overshoot the landing and end up too high or too low, that’s when you start to feel like crap. I’m doing my best, considering I’m used to working with the dead. In the meantime, eat something. Drink your electrolytes. Try to rest.”
She turns on her heels and walks back to her husband, leaving Christabelle and me all alone on our side of the kitchen.
My family could listen in on our conversation if they wanted to, just as we could listen to theirs. But I appreciate the space anyway.
